Portland & Brisbane

Since I haven't blogged here in ages, I decided to make a new post. I doubt anyone reads it, but at least a nice vehicle to write travelcards for my friends and family while on the road.

This time I'm on a 2-week trip to US and Australia. That's right, around the world baby! That's when you realize how small the marble actually is. Nevertheless, travelling is a painful experience - at least when you're covering as much ground as I'm doing on this trip.

I never learn how early you actually have to get up when booking flights. 8.30 sounds like a very reasonable time.. but you don't

realize you have to get up at 5 am to get to the airport and check in. Ungh.. Thank god for Flytoget! Without that option I'd just as well stay over at

Gardermoen.

Having a frequent flyer card is vital. VITAL I tell you. With that you eventually get lounge access, and once you've been in the warm and quiet embrace of the airline lounges, you don't want to go back. And, you can actually find power plugs to charge your hardware..

Going to the US I didn't sleep diddely-squat. ~26 hours awake, bed to bed - makes you sleep well. You'd think. You wake up local time 02.00 because your stomach tells you it's time for breakfast. Time to crack open the minibar and eat one of those $3 chocolate bars! On the plus side, I saw mount he

len flying into Portland.

Portland was cool, went there for work stuff - thumbs up! Well, I didn't actually see

_Portland_, since our conference was ~40 minutes outside of Portland - but the scenery was great and it felt quite homy and relaxed. A picture can't justfy how nice the mountains are in this area, but a picture speaks more than a thousand words (or so I hear). The professional side of the trip was good, lots of fantastic people - my presentation was a

big hit, and lots of followups and positive steam after. But,

is drinking beers and geeking out to the late hours while being jetlagged exhausting? Oh yes.

After Portland I left early-ish to the airport, for the next leg of my trip. Thiago was leaving at the same time, so we joined forces and headed to the Airport lounge. The United Airlines lounge was a disappointing disaster. Not only was there no food, but you had to pay for drinks and I wasn't allowed to leave Thiago there when going to my flight which was 1h prior to his. He had to find a spot in the terminal to sit.

From Portland I went to Vancouver - only remainder of Olymipic paraphernalia was to be seen - to board the 14 hour (!!!) flight to A

uckland. This was with New Zealand air, and was a very nice flight despite being in Economy. Great entertainment system, and the flight crew was really something. The Flight Manager kept telling jokes over the PA system, and jabbing the rest of the crew with sarcastic remarks. (Did you know that the reason why stewardesses need to sit securely in their seat w

hen the plane is landing, is because it hurts their pretty bums if

the plane crashes..).

In Auckland I met with Volker, another colleague and good friend - for a day out and about. We took a boat-cruise to one of the nearby islands - Waiheke, well known for their wine production. As we arrived early, we headed to Onetangi Bay.

As it

happened, they had a festival day with a lot of activities.

We saw horse races, tug of war, tractor racing - you name it! After a few beers we headed back to the dock to join the wine-tasting tour. Three stops with ~5 glasses of wine each. On top of beer. Oh boy.

The next mornign we're up bright and early to go to Brisbane for a week of work. Had a great stay there with good friends and colleagues - and now it's back home after a week ɹǝpun uʍop. Will be great to come back home!!